Our virtual tour across Europe to discover DEVISE project partners’ Regional Action Plans concludes in the North of Spain to find out more about the plan that Regional Government of Cantabria has developed.
Our partner Jorge Muyo from GOBCAN has no doubts: “industrial reinforcement is one of the key priorities in the development of the regions and this industrial reinforcement will not take place, if the regions are not able to associate innovation and new technologies with the industrial production”. Together with the rest of the DEVISE partner organisations, GOBCAN will focus its efforts on digitalization, which is considered a priority by the European Union.
Spanish partners have developed a RAP with one featured action: ‘Targeting Less Innovation Aware (LIA) SMEs to Upgrade Digital Skills (LIA upgrade)’. “We refer to Less Innovation aware SMEs as those companies which are facing the innovation and the digitalisation processes, as followers instead of leaders”, states our partner. With this action, Cantabria will try to encourage the link between companies and technology enablers, building in this way bridges between industry and research. “The selection of this action is the result of the process started by GOBCAN within DEVISE in coordination with other regional stakeholders, which have participated in the project, with the leadership of Innovation DG the responsible of the policy instrument addressed in the project”, explains Jorge. DG Innovation has developed different actions in the past years and the action plan proposed is one-step further in order to increase the level of regional innovation and digitalisation. In consequence, the action will develop a number of activities within the regional ecosystem of innovation and research and with the implementation of the digitalisation component.
The expected impact of the project in the Cantabrian region will allow to reach 100 companies under the LIA concept to implement more innovative and digital services; carry out 50 projects; develop 15 pilot projects in collaboration with innovation stakeholders and, organise 20 training actions and 1 training scheme.
“Through this Action Plan, we want to achieve the creation and support of these open innovation systems, to foster the creation of new products, the implementation of new processes and the improvement of the activity of our traditional industry through their digitization”, concludes Jorge.
Read here Cantabrian Government’s Regional Action Plan.
